Friday, May 19, 2006

I love the carefully employed use of the above typeface -- at some point in human history, this was an unironic font that summed up all of our hopes and dreams about space travel/imperious robot command systems aboard Jupiter-orbiting spacecraft.

The thing that is so singular about this font (I have no idea what it's called) is that you know exactly what it's talking about. There's no bullshitting, hemming, or hawing -- we gon' up into space, bitch. It's totally unambiguous. I fully associate it with Space Mountain (below), and the old Gil Gerard "Buck Rogers" series of my youth. I guess there's an element of fun, as well as... danger.

Also -- there's a small I.T. device in my office called a "Data-Vac" specifically used for sucking up dust within the intricate innards of PCs; all the type on the box is set in the above face. What that says to me is (in the best Orson Wellesian voice-over I can muster): "The apex of human achievement, space exploration, has finally been married to that most quotidian of household chores, vaccuuming."